


(don't have to be) alone tonight

by LiveLaughLovex



Category: The Rookie (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Past Tim Bradford/Rachel Hall, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28571640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: In the aftermath of Tim and Rachel's breakup, Lucy finds herself sitting with her former TO - and current close friend - in a nearly empty bar she still isn't entirely sure the name of.
Relationships: Tim Bradford & Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen
Comments: 31
Kudos: 69





	(don't have to be) alone tonight

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Chris Young's "Lonely Eyes." 
> 
> / 
> 
> If you've seen Bones, this is inspired in large part by the bar scene from season six. If you haven't, and you really want to know what I'm talking about, that scene is available on YouTube; you just have to search "Bones 6x13;" for me, it's the first thing that pops up. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy! :)

Most days, Lucy really did like Rachel Hall. The other woman was kind, and fierce, and funny, and a good friend to have in your corner when everything else had gone completely to hell. On the day she received a late-night phone call from her longtime friend, informing her that Rachel had finally put an end to the “ridiculous” long-distance relationship she and Tim were working to keep together, Lucy really, honestly wished she _didn’t_ like Rachel Hall as much as she did. It would’ve made hating her for what she’d chosen to put Tim through that much easier.

Rachel had called the breakdown of her and Tim’s relationship inevitable, and, okay, Lucy could sort of see where she was coming from with that. Rachel loved the life she’d built in New York, and Tim was a born-and-bred Californian, even if he’d never outright admit it. Neither of them would’ve ever wanted to leave, and it was hard to do the things required to build the sort of life both of them really wanted – get married, have kids – when there were thousands of miles between you every moment of every day.

So, yes, Lucy understood why they’d broken up. She just didn’t exactly understand why it’d been done via voicemail. They’d been together nearly a year, after all. Lucy figured it was common courtesy, giving the person you were ending a yearlong relationship the chance to hear your reasoning behind doing so. To hear it firsthand, specifically, and not on a crappy recording that cut in and out because the call had been made in a New York City subway.

After she and Rachel hung up, Lucy decided it was probably best to begin looking for Tim. Inevitable or not, he _had_ just been dumped by his longtime girlfriend, and he and Lucy _were_ friends. He’d listened to her complain about Emmett countless times before, oftentimes without even complaining about it. She figured it was only fair that she repaid the favor.

The only issue with repaying that favor was, she didn’t have any idea where Tim was at the moment. He wasn’t at home, which was the first place she’d thought to check, or over at Wesley and Angela’s, which was the second. Thankfully, the detective did have some ideas as to where he might have ended up, and so, about half an hour after hanging up with Rachel, Lucy found herself entering an unfamiliar bar in one of the few parts of town that remained equally unknown to her.

The place was nearly empty when she walked in, save for the bored-looking bartender and a small group of patrons scattered across a cluster of booths in the back corner. The near vacancy didn’t really surprise Lucy; it was, after all, nearly three o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Still, she was thankful for the lack of a crowd. It made the person she was searching for that much easier to locate.

There wasn’t an entire empty _bottle_ in front of Tim, which was a relief. She’d originally feared that was what she would find, immediately after getting that call from Rachel. There were, however, four empty glasses on the counter in front of him, and it looked as if he was in the process of nursing a fifth drink as he stared blankly down at the bar, appearing lost in thoughts that Lucy figured were probably a lot more self-sacrificing and self-loathing than they really needed to be.

It’d been a while since Lucy had seen him look quite so brooding. She couldn’t say she’d missed it.

She crossed the room to him, paused behind his shoulder, and greeted him with a quiet, “Hi.”

He didn’t even glance up at the intrusion. “How’d you know where to find me?”

“Tracked your phone,” she answered easily.

“I disabled tracking on my phone,” he retorted suspiciously.

She scoffed indignantly. “Bradford, I am an officer with the LAPD. I’ve got resources at my disposal.”

“You had Lopez track it,” he said, almost before she’d finished speaking.

“That is… she’s one of the resources at my disposal,” she covered quickly.

He at least smiled at that, even if it was only barely. “You filed a report, then?”

“It was a favor between friends,” she answered primly, unable to bite back her own smile as she climbed onto the barstool beside his. “So,” she began conversationally, “exactly how drunk are you?”

He considered the question silently, staring down at his nearly empty glass. “I’m sober enough to walk out of here but drunk enough that I shouldn’t be the one driving away,” he settled on, finally.

“Got it. You’re doing better than I thought you would be, then. Honestly.”

“Rachel called you.” It wasn’t a question.

Lucy nodded once. “Yeah. Yeah, she did. I, uh, I think there’s a chance that friendship might be over.”

He cracked a smile. “Why? What’d you say?”

“I just made it very clear whose side I’d be on, if taking sides was what it came down to,” she answered succinctly, figuring he didn’t really need to be let in on all the gory details. “That’s all.” He glanced over at her, clearly surprised that was the stance she’d chosen to take, and Lucy offered a careless shrug in response. “What? If you don’t want it to be about friendship, fine. I’m just trying to avoid every bit of awkwardness that I can, Tim. I see you on a daily basis. I haven’t seen her since she left for New York.”

“So, it’s just about self-preservation?” he questioned dubiously.

She nodded. “That’s all it is.”

“Alright,” he agreed, albeit begrudgingly. “Whatever you say.”

“Good. Now that we’ve got that settled…” She snagged his glass before he could call the bartender over to refill it. “You and I both know I’m just saving you from yourself, Tim. Hangovers are _not_ a fun experience. Believe me. I went to college more recently than you did. Tequila has been the driving force behind many of my mistakes.”

“I’m not as much of a lightweight as you are,” he fired back, though the retort held none of its usual heat.

“Oh, now, we both know _that’s_ not true,” she rejected laughingly. “I could drink you under the table, if I really put my mind to it.”

“Oh, so you’ve just never put your mind to it, before?” he returned with a teasing smirk.

_“Exactly.”_ She grinned back at him, though her smile slowly slipped as her brain caught up to why they were there. “So,” she said, trying her best to sound casual, “why are you drinking here?”

He looked genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ , I’ve seen your alcohol supply at home, Tim. You’ve got stuff just as good, and you can drink it _without_ the nutshell-covered floors and the…” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “…suspiciously sticky counters.”

He laughed quietly, but the sound held no actual amusement. “I didn’t really want to get drunk over my girlfriend dumping me in the same house where my ex-wife left me, Luce. It didn’t seem like a good idea to remind myself of the fact that I can’t seem to keep a good thing going.”

“Rachel breaking up with you isn’t your fault,” Lucy protested fiercely. “Neither was Isabel leaving.”

He scoffed humorlessly. “I took elementary-level Math, Boot. I know all about common denominators.” He shook his head defeatedly. “When it comes to Isabel and Rachel? _I’m_ the common denominator.” 

“You didn’t shove that first needle into Isabel’s vein…” She frowned apologetically when Tim visibly flinched, “and you didn’t make Rachel take that job in New York. You’re not the problem. Tim, you aren’t a problem. You don’t… you don’t make people leave. This isn’t on you.”

He nodded jerkily, then cleared his throat as he glanced up at her. “Thanks for saying that, Boot, but I don’t really want to talk about it anymore right now. I just…”

“Yeah,” she agreed immediately. “No, of course.”

“I don’t really want to talk about anything, right now,” he admitted a moment later. “I just want to… sit here, I think. Maybe have another drink. _Definitely_ forget about everything that’s gone down in the past six hours.”

“Okay,” she nodded in agreement. “We can do that.”

And that was what they ended up doing – sitting there, at that bar, nursing fresh drinks and tossing bad jokes back and forth, laughing far more than they should have been but exactly as much as they needed to. They left nearly two hours after Lucy arrived, taking a joint Uber because Tim didn’t trust anyone _on_ the streets of Los Angeles, it turned out. He walked her up to her door, too, because it turned out that neither one of them was good at turning off the part of their brain that was overflowing with horrible statistics, apparently. When they paused on the threshold, he stared at her for a moment, almost as if he was studying her, and then, finally, he cleared his throat.

“Thanks, Chen,” he said, genuinely.

“Hey,” she replied, flashing a grin as she finished unlocking the door and finally pushed it open. “that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, smiling slightly. “I guess it is.”

He left soon after that, and Lucy felt relief that, even if she couldn’t fix everything that had gone wrong for Tim recently, she could, at the very least, make it all seem a little less terrible, even if she could only do that for a few hours at a time.

That was, after all, _exactly_ what friends were for, was it not?


End file.
